NGEE Arctic Plant Traits: Soil Nutrient Availability, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, beginning 2016

Soil nutrient availability at all vegetation plots was measured using anion and cation binding resins deployed to vegetation plots at Kougarok, Teller and Council sites on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska. PVC resin-access tubes were installed with the first round of sampling and GPS coordinates were recorded. Access tubes place resin capsules in contact with soil and allow for repeated, undisturbed access to the same location through time. Concentrations of ammonia, nitrate, and phosphate in resin extract solutions were determined in the lab on an autoanalyzer. Data collection started in July 2016 and is ongoing.The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments: Arctic (NGEE Arctic), was a research effort to reduce uncertainty in Earth System Models by developing a predictive understanding of carbon-rich Arctic ecosystems and feedbacks to climate. NGEE Arctic was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research.The NGEE Arctic project had two field research sites: 1) located within the Arctic polygonal tundra coastal region on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) and the North Slope near Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska and 2) multiple areas on the discontinuous permafrost region of the Seward Peninsula north of Nome, Alaska.Through observations, experiments, and synthesis with existing datasets, NGEE Arctic provided an enhanced knowledge base for multi-scale modeling and contributed to improved process representation at global pan-Arctic scales within the Department of Energy's Earth system Model (the Energy Exascale Earth System Model, or E3SM), and specifically within the E3SM Land Model component (ELM).